Browse

My Account

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) repository holds full-text theses and dissertations submitted for higher degrees at the University (including submissions from former Cape Technikon and Peninsula Technikon).

Data policies for big health data and personal health data

View/Open

Date

Author

Metadata

Abstract

Health information policies are constantly becoming a key feature in directing information
usage in healthcare. After the passing of the Health Information Technology for
Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009 and the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
passed in 2010, in the United States, there has been an increase in health systems
innovations. Coupling this health systems hype is the current buzz concept in Information
Technology, „Big data‟. The prospects of big data are full of potential, even more so in the
healthcare field where the accuracy of data is life critical. How big health data can be
used to achieve improved health is now the goal of the current health informatics
practitioner. Even more exciting is the amount of health data being generated by patients
via personal handheld devices and other forms of technology that exclude the healthcare
practitioner. This patient-generated data is also known as Personal Health Records,
PHR. To achieve meaningful use of PHRs and healthcare data in general through big
data, a couple of hurdles have to be overcome. First and foremost is the issue of privacy
and confidentiality of the patients whose data is in concern. Secondly is the perceived
trustworthiness of PHRs by healthcare practitioners. Other issues to take into context are
data rights and ownership, data suppression, IP protection, data anonymisation and reidentification,
information flow and regulations as well as consent biases. This study
sought to understand the role of data policies in the process of data utilisation in the
healthcare sector with added interest on PHRs utilisation as part of big health data.

Rivers, lakes and streams are the only way people encounter water sources in urban
areas. Human endeavours have consequently deteriorated the environmental quality
provided by river systems thus rivers are supporting a ...

Pharmaceuticals have been formulated to influence physiological systems in humans, animals, and microbes but have never been considered as potential environmental pollutants by healthcare professionals. The human body is ...

The purpose of this study was to examine the problem of access to health care centres in the Western Cape and to forward recommendations that will improve access to health care facilities in the Western Cape. The first ...